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It used to be that saying "I'm from Missouri" connoted you were a born skeptic, someone who found suspect any proposal or just plain exclamation that smelled a little fishy. Inhabitants of that quintessentially Midwestern state took great pride in the "show me" attitude those familiar words exuded. But, without a modicum of warning and just in the past week, the phrase has undergone a radical change in import that expunges even a trace of the heralded skepticism it long has been synonymous with.

Not to keep you in suspense, the new version of "I'm from Missouri" has been replaced by the somewhat less inspiring "I'm linguistically and anatomically challenged." All due credit for this metaphoric transformation goes to the GOP senatorial candidate Todd Akin, whose surname eerily describes the discomfort he has inadvertently caused his fellow Republicans, including Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, who have used every nonlethal instrument within reach to try to persuade him to hop the next space shuttle to the moon and not come back until the election's over.

What triggered Mr. Akin's fall from grace is that English obviously is not his mother tongue, so when he lapses into it and departs from his native gobbledygook, he tends to commit industrial-strength gaffes. Which would do him no great harm except on those rare occasions when he's coherent enough to be understood.

The utterance that brought down on him the collective fury of his party was sounded during the course of an interview on a local TV station when he referred to a "legitimate rape," as opposed, we guess, to an illegitimate rape. We can only assume that the difference between the two is that legitimate rapes are committed by duly licensed members of a rapist trade group, while perpetrators of illegitimate rapes are lacking any such imprimatur.

Moreover, to demonstrate his deep immersion in medical lore, Mr. Akin went on to explain that women who are victims of "legitimate rape" rarely get pregnant because the "female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." Mr. Akin apparently is privy to hormonal activity that has completely eluded specialists in obstetrics and gynecology. As a public-spirited citizen, he should lose no time in rushing to share that critical knowledge with those specialists. Until he does, though, we're afraid we must rely on expert opinion like that of Professor Michael Greene of Harvard Medical School, who is quoted as saying of Mr. Akin's notion: "There's no words for this -- it's just nuts."

Sounds like a pretty definitive diagnosis to us.

To be fair, Mr. Akin buttressed his take on rape and pregnancy as having been relayed to him via someone who heard it from a doctor. We have no reason to doubt the veracity of his source, however circuitous the route that brought the would-be senator the vital information. But we were reminded of claims made some years ago by a certified M.D. that he had cured patients suffering from AIDS with aloe vera, whose alleged curative powers were enough to get any number of Wall Street boiler shops working overtime. Then-staffer Eric Savitz did a nifty expose in this magazine that helped squeeze the speculative juice out of aloe vera, which now is found mostly in body fresheners.

However misguided his medical observations, Mr. Akin deserves recognition as having rescued the election from the slough of boredom into which it had been unwittingly thrust by the two contenders for the presidency. The big issue for Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney seemingly is who can fill his campaign coffers with more cash. Everything else appears to be an afterthought.

It's as if both were vying hammer and tongs for the job as the lead auctioneer at Sotheby's rather than sweating over minor matters like how best to pump life into the moribund job market or navigate a perilous global economy, the better part of which is either listing toward or sinking deeper into recession.

Forgive us if we seem a tad disgruntled. Perhaps we're just impatient. After all, there's still slightly more than two whole months left for the pair of political poseurs to serve up something modestly substantive in the way of blueprints for the next four years.

THE STOCK MARKET, WE'RE HAPPY TO REPORT, has pretty much been ignoring the exchange of barbs between the opposing sides that passes as political discourse in any electoral season and especially in this one. We reckon investors find it very much an exercise in futility trying to separate promise from likely performance and so prefer to concentrate on less ephemeral stuff like, will the Fed ease and will Angela Merkel go whole hog in trying to keep the euro zone from imploding, or continue to play the waiting game?

Our own hunch is that good old Uncle Ben is frantically searching for another rabbit to pull out of the hat to give the lame recovery a bit more vigor, a search that probably took on fresh urgency with Mitt's vow last week to replace Ben as Fed chairman if and when he becomes president. The likelihood of some action come the Open Market Committee powwow early next month was more or less telegraphed by the minutes of the last FOMC meeting at which an inordinate amount of concern was voiced about the fragility of the economy.

Apart from a fast lift, it's not at all clear that an easing move would act as a sustained quickening agent for a determinedly sluggish economy, with the fiscal cliff growing ever more forbidding with each passing day, especially in a market so dominated by nano-second trades. And this is a market in which anticipation provides the boost and reality all too often the disappointment.

As to what Merkel will do, no one knows, more than likely even Merkel herself. If she had her druthers she'd just as soon do as little as possible, which for the most part has served her pretty well. But Germany's economy isn't exactly going gangbusters. global trade is far from robust, and the euro zone is vulnerable to another shock. So however reluctantly, circumstances may compel her to adopt, no matter grudgingly or graciously, a more aggressive stance.

All of which gives us pause and makes us more than a bit wary. And so, oddly, does the brisk surge in gold to a four-month high. We say oddly because bullion has been one of the few investments that we've written about this year with consistent enthusiasm. Everything that was wrong with the global financial system seemed to us to add fresh luster to the yellow metal. More than ever, it seemed a reasonably safe harbor in a debt-laden world where paper currencies are being routinely debased to prop up failing economies. It didn't hurt, either, that the gold-mining stocks have been conspicuous laggards for quite a spell.

What touched off the latest pop was a mess of publicity about hedge-fund operators John Paulson and George Soros piling into bullion in the second quarter via one form or another. That inevitably was the signal for the copycat hedge funds, whose numbers are legion, to follow the big guys' ravenous accumulation of the metal, although we recall that Paulson hasn't enjoyed an a untarnished investment record of late. Moreover, India, a major buyer of gold, has cut back sharply this year in reflection of its economic disarray and other woes.

Bullion remains some $300 an ounce below the all-time high of $1,921.15 set in September of last year. Although it has racked up gains for 11 years in a row, it has also suffered some wobbly going earlier this year, dogged by hedge-fund unloading and fretting market technicians as well as the lure to clueless investors of Facebook and its ilk. Once the day traders take their profits from last week's burst upward and the copycats have their fill, we'd expect the gold rush to subside a trifle and set the stage for another run to a new peak.

In short, although we wish the flighty hedge funds had kept their sticky hands in their pockets, we're still bullish on bullion.

THE TABLE THAT ADORNS THESE LINES was compiled by Markit and came to us through the kind agency of HSBC (end of commercial). What it displays is a breakdown of the components of the bank's China Manufacturing PMI (which stands for purchasing managers index). What it reveals on even rapid scrutiny is that, in August, across the board, every facet of production contracted, except inventories, the expansion of which is a sign of glut rather than improvement. Not for nothing are wealthy Chinese engaging in the dangerous business of securing their money by sending it abroad.

That remarkably reliable barometer of the Sino economy, the Shanghai stock exchange, reacted to the news by sinking to its lowest level since the dark and chilly days of 2009. For some time now we've been ringing the tocsin, warming of the vulnerability of China's command economy, especially during this period of a change of leadership, and its dire implications for global trade.